New study from Arizona suggests assisted ventilation, as conventionally practiced in cardiac arrest rescue, may lower chances of survival, authors recommend a revised protocol developed at the University of Arizona College of Medicine

Arizona researchers have added another piece to the mounting body of evidence that suggests during resuscitation efforts to treat patients in cardiac arrest, "passive ventilation" significantly increases survival rates, compared to the widely practiced "assisted ventilation."

The study, published in an online edition of Annals of Emergency Medicine, compared the numbers of patients who had suffered a cardiac arrest outside a hospital setting and were resuscitated in the field by Emergency Medical Services personnel. Rescuers used either bag-valve-mask ventilation, which forces air into the patient's lungs, or facemasks with a continuous flow of oxygen, which work in a similar fashion to those carried on airplanes in case the cabin pressure drops.

"These results are strikingly similar to earlier observations from Wisconsin, where survival rates went up from 15 percent to 38 percent after paramedics abandoned the official guidelines for the modified protocol that we developed," says Gordon A. Ewy, MD, a co-author of the study and director of the Sarver Heart Center at The University of Arizona College of Medicine. The Sarver Heart Center's Resuscitation Research Group developed a modified protocol for treating out-of-hospital cardiac arrest called Cardiocerebral Resuscitation, as opposed to Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, which should be reserved for respiratory arrest (such as near-drowning or drug overdose).

Under the new concept, first tested in Wisconsin, EMS personnel no longer intubated the patient for ventilation. Instead, they applied a facemask delivering a continuous, low-pressure flow of oxygen.

"Our findings provide compelling evidence that positive pressure ventilation is not optimal in the initial management of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest," says lead author Bentley Bobrow, MD, emergency physician at Maricopa Medical Center in Phoenix and associate professor of emergency medicine at the UA College of Medicine. "The work from our EMS providers in Arizona further questions the longstanding dogma of tracheal intubation and ventilation for cardiac arrest.

"We are most pleased that while we are helping to advance the science of resuscitation, we are saving more victims of cardiac arrest in Arizona than ever before," adds Dr. Bobrow, who also is the medical director for the Arizona Department of Health Services Bureau of Emergency Medical Services.

"This study reinforces our belief that survival of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest has more to do with circulating the blood through quality and uninterrupted chest compressions than with ventilation," Dr. Ewy adds.

Researchers from TU Graz and their industry partners have unveiled a world first: the prototype of a robot-controlled, high-speed combined charging system (CCS) for electric vehicles that enables series charging of cars in various parking positions.

Global demand for electric vehicles is forecast to rise sharply: by 2025, the number of new vehicle registrations is expected to reach 25 million per year....

Proteins must be folded correctly to fulfill their molecular functions in cells. Molecular assistants called chaperones help proteins exploit their inbuilt folding potential and reach the correct three-dimensional structure. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry (MPIB) have demonstrated that actin, the most abundant protein in higher developed cells, does not have the inbuilt potential to fold and instead requires special assistance to fold into its active state. The chaperone TRiC uses a previously undescribed mechanism to perform actin folding. The study was recently published in the journal Cell.

Actin is the most abundant protein in highly developed cells and has diverse functions in processes like cell stabilization, cell division and muscle...

Scientists have discovered that the electrical resistance of a copper-oxide compound depends on the magnetic field in a very unusual way -- a finding that could help direct the search for materials that can perfectly conduct electricity at room temperatur

What happens when really powerful magnets--capable of producing magnetic fields nearly two million times stronger than Earth's--are applied to materials that...

The quality of materials often depends on the manufacturing process. In casting and welding, for example, the rate at which melts solidify and the resulting microstructure of the alloy is important. With metallic foams as well, it depends on exactly how the foaming process takes place. To understand these processes fully requires fast sensing capability. The fastest 3D tomographic images to date have now been achieved at the BESSY II X-ray source operated by the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin.

Dr. Francisco Garcia-Moreno and his team have designed a turntable that rotates ultra-stably about its axis at a constant rotational speed. This really depends...